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Dimming the beacon of free speech

A new report by PEN International outlines the many ways that Canada has failed in its responsibility to defend the right to free speech.

Author and lecturer John Ralston Saul is the International President of PEN International. (Chris So / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

By Randy Boyagoda

Fri., Oct. 16, 2015

Imagine this: You are a writer living under threat in your home country, and you’ve just arrived in Quebec City for the PEN International Congress, a gathering of fellow writers from over 80 countries. Back home, you are watched by your government because of what you write, what you say. Your organization’s formal registration is constantly pressured, even under threat, because part of its mission involves critiquing those in political power, regardless of party. But your government has become expert at keeping what should be public information private. The law requires the government to respond to access to information requests, but it obfuscates, delays, denies without explicitly refusing.

You remember the last time the PEN International Congress was held in Canada. It was 1989, just as the Cold War was coming to an end, and the walls of old empires built on lies were coming down, and this country was a beacon for free speech.

Does that beacon still shine?

PEN International’s briefing note on the state of free expression in Canada, prepared for delegates to this year’s congress, outlines the myriad ways that Canada has failed in its responsibility to defend the right to free speech outlined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and, more importantly for Canadians, a right that is articulated prominently in our own Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The briefing note, which has already made national news in Canada, is being read this week by writers from all over the world. Those writers are visiting our country in the midst of a federal election campaign in which politicians are appealing to pocketbooks and pressing political hot buttons.

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Meanwhile, not nearly enough attention is being given to Bill C-51, which allows anyone to be charged criminally for “the promotion of terrorism in general,” even if no terrorist acts take place. From a writer’s vantage point, the wording and logic of this bill is chilling in its breadth: it allows the legislation to apply to novels, plays, and poetry. If this becomes an unchallenged law of the land, it will constrict the flourishing of an open, creative, and ambitious public culture.

Indeed, beyond C-51, according to the PEN International briefing note, the Canadian government has made extraordinary efforts to silence criticism and dissent from civil society and from within the public service. New communications protocols block journalists from accessing publicly-funded scientific research and the government has impeded, if not outright prevented, public presentations by librarians and scientists.

Meanwhile, protestors are kettled and arrested for exercising their democratic rights — leading the UN Human Rights Committee in July 2015 to express concern about the excessive use of force by law enforcement officers during mass arrests in the context of protests, particularly with reference to indigenous land-related protests, the G20, and the student protests in Quebec in 2012.

PEN International delegates will also take note of the dismal state of Indigenous language rights in Canada, especially in light of the organization’s commitment to supporting minority and imperiled local languages and literatures around the world. Despite having many years to address the situation in Canada, there are still no legal provisions made for Indigenous language rights in Canada in the Constitution, Charter, or any other pieces of federal legislation.

Even knowing about all of this has become more difficult. Our once-lauded access to information system is broken. The average response time for requests is 20 days longer than the 30-day limit, and more than 50 per cent of responses are late, making timely reporting impossible for journalists.

The Access to Information Act itself allows public bodies to levy prohibitive fees for requests, and the scope of the act is limited — none of the cabinet, legislature and judiciary is subject to it. And when the information commissioner finds a public body has failed in its legal obligation to respond to requests in a timely and complete manner, the commissioner can only recommend correction but has no binding order powers that would require change.

The PEN International report on the state of free expression in Canada has more to say — too much – about a country so acclaimed internationally for its writers and for providing the conditions to create important, brave, and durable works of literary art and intellectual argument. Are those conditions still in place? Are writers in this country safe, and secure? Is free speech thriving?

The answer, for writers visiting Canada this week from more unstable situations, the answer remains yes — comparatively speaking. The answer should be yes, full stop.

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